Author: Cherie Renae

Did you know the earliest Christians were called atheists by the Romans? According to Elaine Pagels scholarly book, Revelations, Christians were considered atheists because, just like atheists today, who don’t believe in a sheltering deity, Christians of that time mocked people who prayed “that the (Roman) gods would protect them, because…the gods are nothing but dead men whom later generations imagine as heroes.” They concluded that “Roman religion is nothing but a flimsy fabric of lies.”

While other religions of the time allowed (and even encouraged) their adherents to respect and pay homage to other gods, when a person became Christian, they were expected to repudiate all other deities. This didn’t set well with the Romans, who understood that conformity was crucial to controlling their people, and that allowing a group to exercise exclusivity as a religious tenet would undermine their political grip upon the entire populace.

Furthermore, Christians were dangerous because they sought out converts amongst the poor and the outcasts. Unlike other religions, where initiation into the inner mysteries required clothing and items that the marginal people couldn’t afford, Christians welcomed the prostitute and the beggar. They were not only invited into the deepest mysteries, but offered the heretical opinion that admittance into the presence of God was obtained through intuition, not intellect. Again, this gave the masses a sense of control and purpose independent of the Roman state, which Romans feared would lead to the disintegration of the autocracy.

Where Romans believed that political rule and power were rewards from God for their piety, Christians considered these marks of impiety. Tertullian, an early church leader stated, “Unless I am mistaken, all rule and empire are gained by war and victories.” The early Christians experienced firsthand the pain, suffering and death wrought by those who believed their political power was God’s affirmation of their religious views.

Do today’s vocal Christians seek out the prostitute and the destitute? Do they invite divergence in society, or do they seek conformity to their moral perspective? In other words, who do the politically strident Christians of today more resemble – the Romans or the ancient Christians? The answer should make us squirm.

(I highly recommend this book! Buy it here: Revelations )

In the most loving, positive relationships we will still find ourselves occasionally on the giving or receiving end of hurt. What do we do when through word or deed (or lack thereof) we hurt a loved one? How do we forgive ourselves? How do we move on? And what do we do when we’ve been injured by another? How do we forgive them? How do we move on?

To me, the important thing when we’re the injuring party is to ask for forgiveness – without hedging our culpability with explanations. It’s human nature to be defensive, because we don’t injure others deliberately. It’s horrifying to realize we’ve hurt someone else. We truly want to mitigate the damage, but we also have a strong instinct to protect ourselves from the situation we’ve caused.

And that’s the opposite of what we need to do. When we’ve injured someone, the correct response is to stand, defenses down, and allow them to have their reaction. Honor their response by BEING there. We don’t have to absorb it into our souls (in fact, we should not) but we need to be their friend and stand in solidarity with them, even – especially – when we have caused the pain. We’d do it if the source was other than ourselves. Love dictates that we do it when the source is us, too.

What do we do when we’ve been injured by another? First of all, it’s OK to feel what we feel. It’s OK to be angry and hurt. Those aren’t ‘bad’ emotions, they just are. But we’re so uncomfortable with them. To protect ourselves, we tend to have two reactions: disassociation or confrontation.

With disassociation, we distance ourselves from the person, and we try to distance ourselves from our feelings. The problem is, we can’t really do that. The feelings will burble under the surface and rise in insidious ways. This happened recently to me. In a moment of temper (initiated by a circumstance totally unrelated to me) a friend attacked with loud, angry words. I didn’t tell her how I felt, either in the moment or soon afterward. Instead, my reaction was to disassociate. For two months, I kept her at arm’s length, polite but not warm. I tried to bury my feelings of hurt and anger – tried to be ‘above’ it. But I began having nightmares. I found myself being hypersensitive to others, anticipating attack where I normally wouldn’t. I cried at odd times, for no reason that I could think of.

What was happening? I think that because I’d never voiced my pain, it was voicing itself. I was mistaken in trying to be ‘above’ the hurt. I shouldn’t have tried to ignore it or to will it away. What I should have done was to own my feelings. Share them. Give her the opportunity to apologize. To understand. I could have given us a chance to be even closer. Instead, I backed away. And that led to a deepening of those negative feelings. So that when I finally did email her, two months later, it was a stronger communication than it would have been initially. We still aren’t reconciled.

The other common response is confrontation. Fight fire with fire. When we’ve been hurt, some of us come out swinging. We retaliate by inflicting as much return damage as possible. The problem with this is that it doesn’t really make us feel any better. It just heightens our discomfort, pushing our adrenaline levels through the roof, triggering our flight-or-fight reaction. Except that the person in front of us ISN’T a sabertooth tiger, it’s someone we love. We don’t need to square up for the kill – we don’t even WANT to, not really. But the bat is arcing through the air, and it’s too late to pull our swing.

What is the right response? In hindsight (boy, I wish I could operate in hindsight more often) what I should have done with my friend is to write her the next day. Tell her how hurt I was and why. Give her the chance to stand in solidarity with me, to say, “Wow. I see how it looked to you, how it affected you. I’m so sorry.” We could have talked about how to avoid conflict in the future. We could have come away with an even stronger relationship. She might not have reacted well, and it might not have turned out that way. But I never gave her the chance. And she never gave me the chance, either.

Next time, I hope we will. Meanwhile, I miss my friend, and she misses me.

We’re all human. We’re all going to have bad days, we’re all going to have shallow moments where we react and hurt one another. It’s a guarantee. When we love others enough to put our guard down, occasionally we’re going to get hurt. What we have to remember is, we’re also going to get loved. We are going to get the community and relationship and camaraderie that we crave, that we as humans are created for. If we learn how to deal with the hurt, we can live in the joy!

My daughter-in-law (in less than a year!) posted a courageous blog article about 9/11. You can read it here: Make Us Instruments of Your Peace. She reminds us that while 9/11 is a terrible tragedy, there are tragedies that occur worldwide, some of which our country is responsible for, and we should not focus only upon our own sorrow.

I flinch whenever I see the day called “Patriot Day”. It was not patriotic to be burned alive, crushed to death, mangled under tons of rubble. It is evil to usurp the horror of this day, to elbow past the grief of the families who lost loved ones, to twist their tragedy into a day of chest beating in favor of political ideology.

We remember and respect all who died on that day. It was a terrible day. But for me, a more terrible day happened a little over a year later. No one gives speeches on October 3. No one flies flags. No one dedicates parks and statues. But October 3, 2002 was a worse day for me.

Tragedy is not measurable by numbers of dead or by method of death. If we are to set September 11 on a pedestal, let us set it as a day of remembrance for all who have died, in all wars and in no wars, in large numbers and in small. Let us call it Remembrance Day, for death is no respecter of nation or ideology.

I’m still grinning. I can’t believe we’re really here – we made it back to Portland! It’s been almost two months since we moved. I love La Nostra Piccola Grotta – our little cave – an above-ground basement apartment. My window overlooks a lovely pond, and a creek runs right behind it. It’s so idyllic. A bridge forms the eastern boundary of the property, and it’s fairly busy during the day, so the sounds of the city are close at hand. We’re less than ten minutes from the heart of Portland. I LOVE the buildings, the people, the bustle. So happy!

It’s not been without struggle, these past two months. Darkness comes upon me occasionally, even here. But I have more…I don’t know…objectivity, maybe? I can see the chasms from which the tenebrous tentacles emerge, and I have the courage to shine light into those black pits and say, “No! You aren’t a part of me. You are other. Go away.” Darkness is tenacious, of course. But I now recognize the slimy feelers when they tickle my soul. Their grip is weaker. It’s easier to slap them away. I know that eventually, they will depart for good. And that’s an encouraging thought.

It goes back to what I said in May. True courage means choosing a different path – leaving job, home and security – when the current path is damaging to body and soul. It means trusting the Divine. It means trusting ourselves. The results can leave us grinning. 🙂

This week, I challenged Ariyawen members to put only positive words and thoughts into the universe. At the end of the week, a member noted:

“I spent the week trying to be only positive and friendly. I failed at times, and it got me thinking. As humans we are going to get frustrated and upset, and we need ways to vent those things so they don’t fester inside. Swallowing our feelings is never good. How do we vent without affecting the universe and those around us?”

It got ME to thinking. Why do we get frustrated and upset? What are the things that are WORTH being frustrated and upset about? Is a snippy client worth emotional turmoil and an adrenaline response? An idiot driver? A disappointing conversation? The Ariyawen member is right. We are human. We do react emotionally, physically and intellectually to people and circumstances around us. But why do we default to a negative response? Why does that feel *good*? And it must feel good, or we wouldn’t do it. People avoid those things to which they have even a mild aversion. Think of brussel sprouts. Math. Speaking in public. Many avoid these things at all costs, merely because they find them unpleasant. We are well trained to stay away from that which we find repugnant. That means we must *get* something from our anger and frustration.

What do we gain? A sense of righteousness? A sense of entitlement? A feeling of familiarity? We need to identify what is feeding us, so we can choose a different, positive reaction that accomplishes the same thing. You see, it doesn’t matter if we have a positive or negative reaction. We’re still responding. We’re still ‘letting it out’. We’re just choosing a different method of release. But if a positive response doesn’t feel as ‘satisfying’ as a negative response, is it that being positive is the ‘wrong’ reaction, or is it that we’ve fed ourselves on adrenaline and drama for so long that we’re addicted?

Ouch. These are the hard questions I’ve been asking myself lately. The answers I’m finding are painful, but they open the way to self-evolution. And for that, I’m grateful.

The bottom line is, we can train ourselves to be positive, just as surely as we’ve trained ourselves to negative response. All it takes is a lot of work and self-awareness. Discipline. Intent. Forgiveness – of ourselves when we fail, of others when they annoy. The willingness to keep trying in the face of repeated failure, because we are, after all, human.

It helps to remember we are responsible for action, not outcome. Outcomes are the purview of God and the Universe. But with persistent action, we will change ourselves, and in so doing, we’ll change the world. Awen.

We must be so careful with what we put into the universe! What we speak, what we think, what we do – positive or negative – it all affects the world around us.

I was reminded of this in the past week. We recently moved to Portland, a city we’ve wanted to return to for years. The move came about because we simply made the decision. No more wishing, no more waiting. We decided to rent out our house and go. Of course, that opened the way for God/Universe to work. The right renters appeared, the right apartment materialized in Portland, job possibilities came unsolicited, even a cute little studio space fell into my lap.

Three days ago, I sat by the pond with a glass of wine, enjoying the summer breeze. Then came the phone call. “How are things going for you?” asked my friend. I recounted all the blessings in my life. “Oh, that’s nice. Well, it’s been TERRIBLE for everyone else,” he replied, launching into a horrifying litany of death.

The thing is, I didn’t know a single one the people (or pets) whose demise he detailed. I was neither intimately nor casually related to these events. If I had been, I would have absolutely wanted to know, to be given a chance to mourn and to remember, to commiserate in community. But this wasn’t informational, it was inflammatory, fanning the flames of distress so it broached its natural borders to singe passersby like me. Misery loves company, right?

I was trying to figure out how to politely end the conversation when it happened. A neighborhood rooster started screaming. Across my yard streaked a flash of feathers followed by a huge brown form. A dog trailing a leash mauled the chicken in front of my eyes. I screamed at the dog. I screamed at the dog’s owners, clad in flip-flops and blank faces, who stood and watched. They finally got their mastiff/bulldog mix under control, but the rooster was dead.

In the midst of my friend’s recitation of ruin, destruction appeared quite literally on my doorstep. Did he cause the rooster’s death? Of course not. Did the negativity emanating from me as a result of our conversation affect my surroundings? Of course it did. What we say and think yields results. For better or for worse, whatever we put into the universe multiplies.

Multiply it did. We buried the rooster and said our eulogies, but I had trouble getting my emotions under control afterward. Fear and anxiety tried to nest in my heart. “Shoo!” I said. But the damage was done. Blessings from our move showed signs of stress. That which was rock-solid became shaky. But I got a grip, gave thanks to God, and moved forward. The power of the positive is stronger than that of negativity. Everything will be well. But it could have been well all along.

Lesson learned. I will be much more careful about what I allow into my life. I will be much more careful about what I put into others’ lives. August’s mantra: be a blessing, not a curse!

Once again, I’ve discovered that you find out who your true community is when you are in need. During this major move to a new city, I’ve been pleased and sometimes surprised at those who have contacted us and offered to help, and also sometimes surprised at those who have dropped out of sight.

This has happened several times in my life – moves, financial hardships, Lee’s death. People who were totally not on my radar swooped in, saving angels with hands extended to heal and help, while people who I thought were stalwart friends completely disappeared.

Perhaps that’s why we have times of need. Not only does it humble us (I don’t know about you, but I tend to like the helper role MUCH better than the helpee role) and give others a chance to be generous, but it points a finger to those who deserve more of our attention during the fun times! Awen.

To overcome stagnation, all we must do is put one foot on the path. Simple, right? Not so. Not when we convince ourselves we’re shod in cement shoes. Not when we spend weeks and years concocting for ourselves the most elaborate footwear – constructed of possessions and unhealthy attachments, all glued together with elastic excuses. Imagine how far down the road we’ll be when we put that energy into movement!

So, we’re moving. FINALLY!!!!! But the new apartment is tiny. Most of our (my) stuff has to go. I’m having to make difficult choices. Beloved childhood toys are being placed in the estate sale pile. Artwork. Glassware. Things of beauty, things with memories….things that weigh me down and keep me in stasis. It’s good to let go. But it’s difficult.

How little can we keep and live an abundant life? I’m surprised as we pack to see how little is really necessary to feel rich. My indulgences: my piano, my books, some beautiful art. Our kitchen equipment, though we even pared that a bit. Our new abode will be a tailor-made nest, filled with items that delight and help. Everything else, though beautiful, can go. It’s enough to know they exist in the world.

I’ve said it over and over – we don’t own our possessions, they own us, so we should make them precious and few. By what do we wish to be owned?

Yesterday, I created inspirational artwork and prepared planning notes for July’s Ariyawen retreat. Artwork complete and displayed onsite, I returned to put final touches on my notes. Unfortunately, I discovered that I’d somehow deleted them. I don’t remember closing the unsaved document, but it was gone, along with several hours of hard work.

A few minutes later, I found my Ariyawen wiki journal blank. The whole thing had been mysteriously erased, and a quick search revealed no backup. Months worth of entries were gone – poof! – into the ether.

Dismay and distress are reasonable responses, because I can’t recreate the journal entries. Those thoughts and feelings are forever gone, products of the moment in which they were born. I can recreate my planning notes, but that will take several hours of additional effort.

But before I could respond with negative, though understandable, emotions, a thought, gentle as moth wing, fluttered through my mind – what other response might I authentically have? My negative response, ready to swoop, stopped short. Rather than gearing up for a major pout-bout, I found myself calm and bemused.

What other response MIGHT I authentically have?

Well, the retreat notes were just initial ideas; a second time through might yield better results. But if I still had the first version, I probably wouldn’t take the time to rethink it all. So, perhaps their disappearance is a blessing, because it frees me to enjoy that initial creative stage again, this time with more forethought.

My journal? Well, I often repost my thoughts from the Ariyawen website into my journal, so much of what disappeared still exists elsewhere. The rest were thoughts and feelings of the moment, important in their time, but probably not eternally memorable.

So it turns out, there’s no reason to brew up a storm. I don’t have a disaster, I have clear skies – cloudless and fresh. My words are free to fly.